JANE AUSTEN - BOOK OR FILM? by Patricia Cleveland-Peck

      My feelings about films adapted from books I love are very mixed. Jane Austen seems to test scriptwriters and directors severely and I have come to the conclusion that despite my enjoying the the glorious extravaganza of costumes and settings, I am really happiest with the pictures formed in my head from reading the books.

     That being said I did enjoy Emma with Anja Taylor-Joy, the last film I saw in a cinema before lockdown. I felt it was fairly faithful to the story and as well as looking beautifully glossy ( not a muddy bottom in sight) there wasn't too much which jarred.

     The same cannot be said for Persuasion which is currently available on Netflix, Dakota Johnson's portrayal of Anne grated time after time; she smirked, she was flippant, she talked to camera, she swigged wine from the bottle and used wildly anachronistic  language.  The sentiment, 'worse than exes, we're friends,' neatly sums up an unenviable situation but it is lazy writing not to have found a way of expressing it which chimes more faithfully with the period.

    When as readers we watch a film adaptation as the very  least we want to recognise the characters we love. With Dakota Johnson's Anne, we don't. When reading we build up a picture of the characters from the clues the writer provides; when watching a film, the director's input and the actor's interpretation put us at a further remove. If well done this can in fact add something, Anja Taylor-Joy's snide little glances as Emma enhance our understanding of this self satisfied little madam- but it doesn't happen very often.

     It seems likely that many adaptations are targeted at people who have never read the books and for whom they undoubtedly provide enjoyable entertainment - which of course is a very god thing.

     Even so, give me the book every time!    

 

I'll finish off with a verse I've had in my in-tray for a long time. I have no idea who wrote it (and Mr Google doesn't seem to know either) but it does highlight a more amusing problem suffered by many Jane Austen admirers.

JANE IN VAIN

I often get lost in the works of Jane Austen

For Jane is my favourite writer;

Suave and satirical, Jane is a miracle,

Who subtler than Jane - and who lighter?

With elegant diction unequalled in fiction

Her characters meet and commingle,

Unlike say the martyrs of Camus and Sartre,

So anguished, so lonely -so single.

Though nil is the ration of bedroom and passion,

When Crawford runs off with Maria

Their sex-life off stage in that elegant age 

May still be assumed to have fire

Such art, with such breeding, makes beautiful reading -

But let me confess my dilemma;

I'm only safe when it's the Bingleys and Bennets,

I mix up Persuasion with Emma,

I've read them al thrice. I recall Fanny Price

Beneath old Sir Thingummy's aegis - 

Was it this Cinderella, or some Isabella

who fell off a cliff at Lyme Regis?

I can't recall rightly if Mr John Knightly

Resided at Donwell or Randalls,

My memory's flabby, is Northanger Abbey

The one with the Willougby scandals?

I am quite in the dark, is it Mansfield Park

That begins with the Dashwoods all greedy

And planning what cash would be left to John Dashwood

If kept from some relative needy?-

No they lived at Norland - with Catherine Moreland,

Or Rushwood, or Bertram. or Elton,

Or perhaps Marianne or Miss Elliott ( Anne?)

In scenes that all Janeites dwell on ...

Mistress of clarity, what a disparity

Between my response and your art!

But Jane don't complain. I shall read you again

And again, tillI've got you by heart